From the recent Imagine Dragons concert in Vancouver. I thought this was the moment I’d been waiting for, but the best was yet to come.

I never paid much attention to the Imagine Dragons before the Grammy Awards on January 26.

I was well familiar with their radio-friendly first single, Radioactive, but also knew they were very popular with the kids in the youth programs I work in.

Which right there put me off of them, for surely my musical tastes were more discerning than those of a 12-year-old.

Then the Grammys happened. I don’t own a TV, but followed the progress on Twitter and the official Grammys website. When Radioactive won Best Rock Performance, it made me curious in spite of myself about what the rest of their debut album, Night Visions, sounded like.

In a word: great.

In a few more words, it’s easy to see why they’re so popular, and likewise why their fan base is of such diverse ages.

I was quite surprised, however, by the set list the band selected to play. Not because they played songs I didn’t know or like (I know and like almost all of Linkin Park’s songs, so that’s never a concern). Rather, it was because their set all at once caused me to perceive the band in a different way than I’d previously done all the years I’ve been a fan, since 2000.

Which, in turn, recalled me to the fact that what a music-lover/reader/viewer takes away from a song/novel/movie/TV show/etc. might be wildly different from the intended message of the artist that produced it.

I am a music lover.

As I mentioned for one of the seven things about me when I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award, music is both the filing cabin and the encyclopedia of my mind. It helps me make sense of my life through my tendency to categorize and understand my various experiences according to specific lyrics or sounds.

Music is also intrinsically tied into my writing life, for I can’t write well without it, and it likewise inspires my daydreams, my imagination, my stories.

My love of music was one of my largest motivators for finally giving up on shared living last year and getting a place on my own, for I couldn’t play my stereo at 6:30am since my roommates didn’t get up that early.

My love of music also resulted in a 30km-journey to the suburbs by public transit to buy a pair of high-end second-hand Harman/Kardon speakers. I hate public transit. I’m not wild about the suburbs either. But I believe that true enjoyment of music is obtained, not through earbuds, but when it’s played aloud and you can feel it in your solar plexus and the soles of your feet.